OFC Rump Session: Reimagining global comms

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Imagine a world plunged into digital silence. No texts, calls, emails, or internet.

At this year's OFC conference in San Francisco, three teams of telecommunications experts will tackle a provocative thought experiment as part of the Rump Session: if Earth's entire communication infrastructure vanished overnight, how would they rebuild it? 

With a clean slate and ten years until implementation, the teams will outline what they consider is the ideal replacement global network.

The Rump Session's audience will choose the best solution.

The scenario

OFC is asking the three teams of experts to imagine a world where global communication has been destroyed following an exceptional event. 

Thankfully, only the network has been destroyed: manufacturing facilities, R&D sites, and communications expertise remain intact. So humanity has a chance to design a brand new network unencumbered by legacy equipment.

The ten-year implementation window is to allow emerging technologies to be considered as part of the new network build.

Considerations

Gazettabyte asked two telecom specialists outside the optical community how they would tackle the networking challenge.

If all the communications networks are down - fixed, mobile, satellite and broadcast - then it makes sense to get a simple universal comms system up and running as fast as possible, says William Webb, a consultant and author.

That would ensure there is enough communications to keep the population informed and allow those working on more complex systems to have communications while doing their design work.

For Dean Bubley, analyst and founder of Disruptive Analysis, the scenario triggers many questions.

Where will the demarcation point be between optical, wired and wireless networks?

“Is wireless just for the last kilometer or the last 10 meters of the access network?” says Bubley. “Or does wireless have a role for long-haul and transport as well, especially given the lower latency, and higher speed of light through air or a vacuum than through glass.”

Bubley wonders how to build in an expectation of continued innovation. Avoiding lock-in or static solutions is important: “Standards are fine, but there needs to be scope to try new things as well.”

Should Government oversee the restoration project or is the best approach to encourage competition and free market wherever possible? “Where does regulation fit and what does it focus on?” says Bubley.

Webb says the quickest way to get going is satellite coverage and portable antennas so people can use it when on the move even if it is nothing like as convenient as cellular.

The next stage would to launch High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) - tethered balloons and similar - to deliver cellular coverage relatively quickly.

A mix of tethered balloons near cities and high-altitude drones for other areas would deliver cellular comms within months, bringing cellular online at 4G-like capabilities.

“We can then work on a combined fixed-mobile solution. The ideal solution would have one fibre network delivering comms to homes, offices and cellular/Wi-Fi base stations, and one set of masts, ” says Webb.

Webb would forego network competition: it's better to build a near-perfect network and then have a wholesale-retail split.

“Build from cities outwards, and stop building when the HAPs and satellite solution has the capacity to manage residual premises. Assume fibre to the edge of premises and Wi-Fi inside,” says Webb.

He would not rebuild cable networks or copper networks.

“But this sort of thing is best done by getting a group of us together and debating and discussing,” says Webb.

Just what the OFC Rump Session will do.

Origins

Antonio Tartaglia, one of this year’s Rump Session organisers, came up with the evening event's theme.

“The Rump Session has always been my favourite OFC event. Joining the OFC Technical Program Committee, I was asked to contribute ideas,” says Tartaglia. “As a member of the public, I asked myself: ‘What is the Rump Session you’ve been dreaming of?’”

Tartaglia, system manager and expert in photonics technologies at Ericsson, is keen to learn what the teams of experts will come up with.

His educated guess is that optical technologies will take the lion’s share of the new network.

“It will also be hard to ignore low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology, that provides coverage where other technologies would not make economic sense,” says Tartaglia. Optical technologies will also play a big role here.

“But even in a brand-new world, I expect LEO satellites to complement, not replace terrestrial mobile networks as we know them,” says Tartaglia. “They are the result of decades of deep optimisation.”

"As scientists and engineers, we spend so much of our day-to-day work on improving the current state-of-the-art networks and taking that small next step forward in terms of technology, product or a solution," says Dirk van den Borne, another of the Rump Session organisers.

He finds it intriguing to imagine how engineers would design the network if they could ignore existing installed equipment.

"This session will be thought-provoking and might spur great conversations at the conference and beyond," says van den Borne, director of system engineering at Juniper Networks.

Rump Session details: 

• When: April 1st Time:
• Evening time: 19:30 to 21:00
• Location: Rooms 203-204 (Level 2)